Zelda: Breath of the Wild – Game Informer features (#8: Missing Zelda tropes)

As announced the other day, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is on the cover of Game Informer this month, which means the game is getting month-long online coverage on the magazine’s website. There will be various features, covering the following topics:

how the game truly re-examines the Zelda formula

plenty of details about the new dungeons

what’s in store for the future of 2D Zelda games

Eiji Aonuma’s favorite Zelda games

and more…

For the latest update, Game Informer made a compilation of the various “Zelda tropes” that simply cannot be found in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The elements below have been found in most, if not all the Zelda games to date, but the development team decided to get rid of them for various reasons.

Compass

As mentioned in a previous feature, dungeons in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild do not have a compass anymore. However, there is a compass item, that helps you find the many Shrines hidden throughout Hyrule. However, we don’t know how that compass work, or when you get it…

Treasure chests jingle

Unfortunately, this new Zelda game will not get its own treasure chest opening jingles, as opening chests is a pretty silent business in this game.

Green tunic

In this game, Link isn’t wearing his usual green tunic, that he has been wearing since pretty much the beginning of the series (though with many different variations across the years). According to Aonuma, you will be able to find some green clothes in the game, but you will most likely spend most of the game without them…

Rupees

It’s not so much the rupees that have been removed, but some of the ways you can find them. For example, you will no longer find rupees simply by cutting grass anymore, you will have to get some by selling treasures and other items.

Here’s what Eiji Aonuma had to say about that:

In the past, we had it so that whenever you defeated an enemy you would get rupees. Whenever you cut grass, you would get rupees. In the two-dimensional world, it was really necessary to encourage the player to explore and find those rupees, but then with this world, we really realized we didn’t need to have the player collecting rupees because there are so many items already scattered in the world and we wanted to shift the focus to those items. If you cut the grass in Breath of the Wild, there will be grasshoppers.

Jump

In The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Link can finally jump… and without an item, too!

Epona

Link can ride various horses in the game, but none of them is THE Epona that players have come to rely on. What’s more, Link has to catch them before he can ride them, and they can even die in battle if you’re not careful. If you want, you can give a name to your horses.

Here’s what higeru Miyamoto had to say about animals in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild:

I really love Epona and all the animals in the world. In Breath of the Wild, there was actually a dedicated designer and programmer just to create animals, and there are many, many different types of animals. Even with horses, you really get to know the horse and raise them and ride them, and even with the other animals, you can just view them, or if you get hungry you might have to hunt them. You have that choice. Even when you look up at the sky, you see birds on their way somewhere and it’s fun to think, ‘Where are they going to end up? Where are they going?’

Items and Dungeons

Up until now, dungeons were designed around a central item, generally found in that very dungeon. As explained in this previous feature, it’s no longer the case in this game. The reason? You do not find items in dungeons anymore.

Patient enemies

In The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, enemies have become quite impatient. They will no longer wait patiently when attacking, and instead, they will try to strike at every opportunity. As you can imagine, it does make the battles a lot more challenging, but also more rewarding.

Here’s what Eiji Aonuma had to say about that:

Trying to figure out when to approach those difficulties, is part of the strategy and fun of playing Breath of the Wild, so it was important that it be fun to die. Even for players who aren’t particularly good at action or battles, if they want to, they can go and buy a really expensive weapon that can defeat a really strong enemy in one shot.

Bombs

Bombs work differently in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: they’re all detonated remotely, and no longer explode on their own after a few seconds.

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